


Lionhearted Girl

by Mordekai



Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Au - Gwen is spiderman, Canon Het Relationship, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, spider!Gwen, superhero!Gwen, swearing if that bothers you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mordekai/pseuds/Mordekai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter never finds the room of spiders at Oscorp, Gwen does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Idea came from reading http://archiveofourown.org/works/1416808   
> It's absolutely amazing, so if you haven't read it already, what are you waiting for? Put this crappy fic aside and go read that one. ;)

Gwen continued to lead the group of visiting students when she noticed Peter starting to slip away.

“Rodrigo, stay with the group please.”

His whole body flinched and he turned back with a sheepish smile on his face. Rubbing his hands through his hair and laughed nervously.

“I’m sorry, got distracted.” His smile, sheepish though it may be, sets off flutters in her stomach.

She hurries through the tour so she can confront him on why he’s here.

___________

“If you’re not following me, what are you doing here?” Gwen had pulled his aside after the tour and was now looking at him expectantly.  

“Okay. I have a good reason.” He took a death breath. “I, uh, found a briefcase that used to belong to my dad and it had a secret compartment, right? There were files about his work here with Dr. Connors and well I thought if he bothered to keep it hidden, it must be important.”  Peter explained nervously to her.

Gwen’s face softened. “Look Peter, I’m sorry, but I can’t let you wander off by yourself. You could get hurt and I could lose my job.”

“I know, I know. I didn’t expect you to be here. I wasn’t trying to get you involved.” He looked like he wanted disappear.

“Maybe you could make an appointment to talk to Dr.Connors?” She said softly.

“I don’t know. I think if he wanted to tell me anything about my dad, he would have tried to talk to me before. I mean, who knows? Maybe he had a falling out with my dad and hated the man? Maybe he’s mad at him for disappearing.”  Peter rambled, hands fidgeting with each other. “Um, well. It was good to see you anyway. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.” And with that he turned and left.

Well that brought up a lot more questions than it answered.

____________

It’s not until after she’s in bed at night that she makes a decision. She knows Peter was raised by his aunt and uncle after his parents left when he was a kid. Rumor was they died, but she never knew him well enough to bring it up.  

On the internet she finds something about Dr. Connors working with Richard Parker. She knew Connors was working on cross-species genetics of course but she didn’t know Peter’s dad had been involved. A couple articles about Parker and Connor’s work lead her to an article about Mary and Richard Parker’s deaths.  She covers her mouth with her hand and exhales slowly. A plane crash what an awful way to die. The picture of the wrecked plane brings images of explosions and screams to her mind. She pushes the images away where they settle behind her eyes and continues to look. However no one seems to talk where they were going or why the plane crashed. If she didn’t know better, she’d be tempted to put on her tinfoil hat. She resolves to do some snooping at Oscorp tomorrow. She gets a nervous feeling in her stomach. Maybe she’s over stepping her bounds, but she’s too curious to stop now. Besides if she finds anything good, she can bring it to Peter. That’s her justification to herself at least.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't break into locked rooms.

         Gwen can’t stop concentrate in any of her classes. It doesn’t matter much; one day of slacking isn’t going to bring her grades down. She chats with a couple of classmates at lunch, but her mind wanders. She may not be close to many people, but she’s nice and most people genuinely like her. She’s not bullied the way she knows others are. Nowadays bullies try to be more secretive about their bullying and not be caught by teachers, but everyone knows it’s still real. Flash was the exception, he was loud and proud, and more importantly not afraid of the administrators.  Gwen tutors him and she knows his home life is a mess; it doesn’t excuse him to be a jerk in her opinion.

    Gwen rushes to Oscorp right after school. She works with extra vigor, putting her nervous energy into her work. It’s not until after her shift is over she finds a room listed under Connors that she’s never been in before. She watches from behind a corner for someone to open the door. A few minutes later, a man opens the door and goes into the room. It’s not long before he comes out, looks around and marches off.

After the guy’s out of view, Gwen gets in the room easily, entering the password she just saw him type.  She sees machines she’s never seen before that look like they’re manufacturing something. She leans in to get a closer look at one that looks like a loom. The other machine is packaging pellets she doesn’t recognize. Gwen’s not sure what they’re making, but it seems obvious they don’t want the interns knowing about it. A blue light catches her eye and she glances around nervously before slipping into the second room. The room is bathed in blue light and a circular grid spins around the center. Her face scrunches up in confusion and she steps closer to look at the silk covering the grid. That’s when she sees the spiders. She squeaks softly before knows what she’s doing. Gwen’s never been particularly afraid of spiders, but seeing thousands of spiders crawling around sends shivers down her spine. She lightly brushes her fingertips against the silk. Unfortunately even the light vibrations seem to upset the spiders and soon they’re swarming her.

“Stay calm, Gwen Stacy”, she mutters over and over like a mantra as she tries to brush all the spiders off.  She feels a sharp pain in the back of her neck and she starts to brush the spiders off more vigorously. She hurries out of the strange blue room, and out into the hallway, only stopping to check quickly that no one was around.  Her skin felt itchy everywhere. She grabbed her bag and left. It was past time for her to go and she didn’t want anyone noticing she had stuck around.

 

                 The ride home is a blur. She has trouble keeping her eyes open but at the same time her body won’t stop twitching. It’s a miracle she doesn’t crash her car. The light is too bright and everything is too noisy. When she gets to her family’s apartment, she throws her bag on the couch and it makes an awful creaking noise.

“Honey, you’re later than normal. You get hung up at the lab?” Her mom calls to her before turning around and seeing her. “Gwen baby! You look awful.”

“Thanks mom.” She says with a humorless chuckle.

“You know what I mean, do you need a doctor?” Her mom’s brow was scrunched up in worry.

“No mom. I’m just going to get a snack and rest in my room for a while.” Gwen tried to reassure her, but found she lacked the energy.

“Alright, tell me if you need anything.” She still didn’t look convinced.

 

A snack would definitely be good, Gwen is absolutely starving. She goes in the kitchen and grabs a bread loaf and a jar of peanut butter. It doesn’t seem like enough so she grabs the sliced ham from the fridge. It still doesn’t seem like enough so she raids the junk cabinet and grabs all of the chips and processed junk she can find. At this point her arms are full of food, but to her surprise, she’s having no problems carrying it.

She hears his footsteps even before he opens his mouth. She whirls around to face her younger brother.

“Woah. Chill.” His eyes widen even more when he sees what she’s holding. “What army are you feeding?”

Gwen rolls her eyes and brushes past him. She shuts her bedroom door much harder than she’s trying to and the frame rattles.  Her head is aching, she sweating through her clothes, and she’s so fucking hungry.  She hopes that spider wasn’t poisonous, but what would she say to the paramedics? “Yes hi, I got bit by a secret spider created by Oscorp. Do you have any anti-venom for that?” Her last thought before she passes out is what they would tell her parents.  

She wakes up at 1 am because it sounds like the outside traffic has come into her room. She can hear her family sleeping clearly and make out their individual heartbeats. She tries to put the pillow over her head but it sticks to her hands. She ends up falling back to sleep with her hands still stuck.  Her alarm clock startles her awake at 5 am. And by startle she means she finds herself clinging to the ceiling. She lowers herself down and tries to shut off the alarm clock, but at her touch it shatters.  Her morning routine doesn’t get any better from there. She feels like she’s been stuck in a dollhouse where she’s still the same but nothing works right. Everything feels like a toy that will break apart at the slightest touch.

Gwen grabs a jar of peanut butter and spoon, grabs her bag from the couch and leaves to go to school. Except on the way she stops and realizes how ridiculous the situation is. A spider bite has either given her super powers or she’s obviously tripping form the poison. Everything feels real though, but she doesn’t know. She’s never done drugs. Instead of going to school, Gwen heads to the small park a few miles from her house. No one goes there and she needs time to figure things out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Err. I'm not happy with this chapter. Next chapter should be out sometime early next week. Gwen shall eat peanut butter straight out of a jar and skip school. Bad Gwen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this halfway done and then finals happened. Anyway in between posting the second and this chapter, I saw TASM 2. So obviously with the revelations in the movie, Gwen could never survive being bit by the spider. Oh well, this is why AUs exist.

When she gets to the park, she realizes she has no idea what she's going to do. Gwen goes over to the old oak tree in the park and cranes her head up to look at the highest branches. She puts her hands on the trunk and pulls herself up, her feet reflexively scrambling for purchase. She finds she doesn't need it however. She climbs vertically with ease. It feels more like walking than climbing. The many branches twist wildly, but Gwen finds she can slip easily through even the narrower gaps. The highest crook in the tree is about 60 feet up and when she gets there she sits with her legs dangling in the air. From her perch she can her neighborhood. Adrenaline is still coursing through her veins and she fills giddy with nerves and joy. She slides the backpack to her lap and takes out the peanut butter jar, hanging the bag on a nearby branch. Breakfast time. 

It doesn't take long before Gwen's finished off the peanut butter and starts yearning to see what else she can do. Grabbing the branch with both hands, she tumbles forward, swinging like a trapeze artist. And that's how she ends up doing a handstand on a branch 60 feet in the air. She slowly removes her left hand and leaves all her weight on her right. Make that a one-handed handstand. As a child, she felt almost jealous of the trapeze artist swinging from rope to rope, as close to flying as a person can get without a machine. Then she'd realized if a trapeze artist screwed up once, they could end up with a broken neck. That thought had quickly dashed her short lived dream. Plus, grace and balance were never her strong suit. But something had changed. Ever since that spider had bit her at Oscorp, she'd changed. The scientist part of her wanted to know more, the teenager side of her wanted to test out her new abilities. She could always document these abilities later. She rights herself and grabs her hanging bag before looking down. She doesn't feel confident enough to jump the whole way down, so she hops down, branch by branch. Still she finds her body seems to know what to do and she doesn't have to be careful about it. But then she's back on the ground and not really sure what to do next. The next step up in things to climb would be a building, and she doesn't want to do that in the middle of the day. Besides she's already late for school. Deciding to try climbing again tonight she walks to school.

At the office Gwen has to sign in and get a late pass. They all look at her strangely and she wonders bitterly if it's so foreign an idea for them that Gwen Stacy has an unexcused tardy. Then she goes to the bathroom to touch up her make up. Of course. Gwen's palms are scraped up from climbing the tree, her knees dirty, and a leaf is stuck in her hair. She looks like she's been lost in the woods for days. She fixes herself up as best she can then goes off to her English class. It's about half way over when she gets there and everyone turns to look as she walks in. She mumbles a sorry and hands the teacher the pass before sitting down. She smooths her skirt out and takes her notebook and pen out. Her classmates glance at her until they eventually lose interest. Peter is the only one who continues to watch her. Perhaps her expression is less than friendly, because he looks guilty and slightly frightened before ducking his head and looking away. 

After the class, he catches up with her.

"Hey, I just wanted to say sorry for showing up at Oscorp."

"Peter, you already apologized."

"Yeah. I know. Just sorry, I hope you didn't get into any trouble." 

_Oh, if only you knew._ She thinks to herself, aloud she says, "Really it's okay." Still he's cute when he's nervous and that's probably why she blurts out the rest without thinking it through. "We should do something sometime."

He freezes for a second and a look of shock graces his face before he tries to look neutral again. He swallows thickly and she notices he can't keep his hands or feet still. It's amazing what she can notice now. She can't believe how much she must have missed before. In one second, she doesn't have to focus on just one thing, she can take everything in. It's almost like time stops for her. 

"Yeah. Definitely. We should definitely do something. Hang out, I don't know. Sounds good."

She'd chuckle at how flustered he is but she can seem to stop herself from being just awkward.

She nods "Yeah. I mean I'm really busy this week but yeah. Definitely."

"Oh. Same. I mean, really busy."

 “Yeah. I’ll see you around.” She waves and turns on her heel.

“See ya” He calls back.

She smiles and waves and watches as he smiles back.

_______________

The rest of the day, Gwen is on cloud nine. She feels invincible, there’s nothing she can’t accomplish. She doesn’t have to go to Oscorp today so she goes home right after school. She does her homework, wolfs down dinner, gives her mom a kiss on the cheek and tells her she’s going over to MJ’s.

Her dad isn’t going to be home till late so she figures she has plenty of time to try out what she can do in the city.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried for awkward teenager conversation, hopefully I did okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm avoiding spoilers for TASM 2, even though I know what happens to Gwen in the comics already. So if Gwen meets the same fate in the movie that she does in the comic, this fic is my "screw that" reaction.


End file.
